The Georgia Voyeur
Twenty-seven-year-old Lauren Giddings had been the first of her family to attend college. Her relatives back in Maryland were proud that she would soon have a career as a public defender. Lauren had just graduated from Mercer University’s Walter F. George School of Law in Macon, Georgia.
Although she had finished school, the tall, beautiful, green-eyed blonde spent the final week of June 2011 studying for her upcoming bar exam. Lauren’s sister knew she would be spending long hours preparing for the exam, so it didn’t raise any concerns when Lauren hadn’t returned her text messages.
Lauren had lived in Barrister Hall Apartments, directly across the street from her law school, for the past three years. Although she loved her apartment’s location, she had mentioned to her sisters and classmates that she frequently had an eerie feeling someone had been inside her apartment while she was away. She had noticed things in her apartment appeared to be arranged differently than the way she had left them. At least she thought so… but she couldn’t be sure.
Throughout the past year, Lauren had considered moving to a different apartment complex, but the location was so close to school that it was hard to give up that convenience. Plus, now that she had just graduated, she planned to move to Atlanta the following Thursday, anyway.
* * *
On a Saturday afternoon, Lauren visited with her friends during the day and went home in the evening. Late that night, Lauren emailed a close friend saying that she was afraid to stay in her apartment alone that night. Something just didn’t feel right. That was the last communication anyone had with Lauren.
During the following week, Lauren’s friends couldn’t reach her. They called her cell phone and knocked on her door, but there was no response. Her friends called the police when they hadn’t heard from her for several days.
Police met one of Lauren’s classmates at her apartment for a welfare check and knocked on the door. Peeking through the window, they couldn’t see much. There was no sign that someone had broken in and nothing seemed out of the ordinary from the outside. The officers spoke briefly to a few neighbors in the area, but concluded that she just wasn’t home. The police told her friend not to worry. Lauren’s boyfriend, an Atlanta lawyer, was in California at the time and the officers suggested she may have taken a flight to spend time with him.
Lauren’s classmate was not convinced. She was a very responsible and professional young woman; it wasn’t like Lauren to just disappear. Plus, she would never have gone on a trip just days before her bar exam. The classmate called Lauren’s sister Kaitlyn in Maryland, who confirmed that she had not heard from Lauren either.
Kaitlyn, however, knew that Lauren hid a key under a potted plant on her balcony and gave permission for the girl to enter her apartment. Several of Lauren’s friends arrived at the upstairs apartment to get the key and check inside. Stephen McDaniel, who had lived in the apartment next to Lauren for the past three years, joined the search. Twenty-five-year-old McDaniel was a classmate of Lauren’s that had also just graduated and was preparing for the bar exam.
When the group entered Lauren’s apartment late Wednesday night, the first thing they noticed was a door-jammer security bar lying next to the door. Normally, she would have propped the security bar against the door under the handle and wedged it against the floor to prevent an intruder from entering. Other than that, there was no sign anyone had forcefully entered the apartment and there was no sign of Lauren. Strangely, her belongings were still there. Her cell phone, wallet, driver’s license, passport, and car keys. Her car was still parked in the parking lot. She definitely hadn’t gone on a trip without bringing her identification. Lauren’s friends again called Macon police and filed a missing person report just before 2:00 A.M.
Police arrived early on Thursday morning to search the apartment and neighborhood, as well as interview neighbors and classmates. Television news crews were quickly on the scene too, interviewing anyone who knew Lauren. Lauren’s neighbor and classmate Stephen McDaniel was more than happy to talk to reporters.
The strong summer breeze blew Stephen’s long, messy curls into his face as he enthusiastically told television cameras that they had been looking for Lauren for the past four days. When asked what he thought may have happened to her, he hypothesized, “The only thing we can think of is that maybe she went out running and someone snatched her.”
* * *
Thursday morning was garbage day. Just after 9:00 A.M., a trash truck arrived to empty the trash cans on the side of the apartment complex at Barrister Hall Apartments, but they had to skip the pickup because police cars blocked their access. If they had shown up any earlier police would have lost their biggest piece of evidence. At 9:40 A.M., police noticed a smell coming from a flip-top curbside plastic garbage can. When they laid the garbage can on its side and went through its contents, they found a black plastic garbage bag. Inside the bag was a female torso. The arms, legs, and head had been severed.
Stephen McDaniel was in the middle of a live interview with television news cameras when he got the news that police had found the torso. As he explained to the reporter where they had searched for Lauren that morning, the reporter asked, “What about in the parking lot area? I think that’s where they’ve recovered a body.” Stephen squinted as if he was confused. His face grew blank and he mumbled, “Body?”
The reporter continued asking him questions, but Stephen only stared wide-eyed with his mouth gaping open. He was unresponsive and rocked slightly side-to-side. The reporter asked, “Are you okay?” He looked as if he were on the verge of fainting and replied, “I think I need to sit down.”
Stephen stumbled a few feet away and sat on the curb in a daze. Several minutes later, he returned to the television camera in tears. Crying hysterically, he told reporters he wished he could have helped her. He stuttered and stammered for almost ten minutes, saying that he wished he could have loaned her one of his guns. His performance, however, was a little over the top. It seemed overly extreme for someone who was only a neighbor and not a close friend. His interview caused investigators to take notice.
Throughout the day, police interviewed Lauren’s friends and neighbors individually. Stephen McDaniel’s interview started at 11:50 A.M. and he offered to help in any way he could. Right away, however, detectives noticed he was nervous and fidgety. His anxiety was a tell. Stephen had a scratch on his face. When police asked him to remove his shirt, there was another scratch on his stomach. He claimed he must have scratched himself as he slept. During the questioning, Stephen also made an odd comment. He claimed he was a virgin; saving himself for marriage.
Later in the day, the DNA from the torso had been compared to that of Lauren Gidding’s mother and it was a match. The missing person case had just become a homicide and McDaniel became the prime suspect.
Stephen McDaniel had just graduated with a law degree. There was no question that he knew his rights. However, when investigators asked if they could search his apartment, he requested neither a warrant nor legal counsel. He simply agreed and led four investigators back to his apartment.
Inside his apartment, police found an extensive collection of swords and guns. Stephen also had stockpiles of canned and dried foods and toilet paper, as if he were preparing for an apocalyptic lockdown. In a dresser drawer, police found a pair of women’s underwear with holes cut into them – presumably so he could wear them as a mask.
As detectives continued their search of his apartment, Stephen dripped sweat profusely and drank ten bottles of water.
Detectives were puzzled when they found condoms in his nightstand drawer. Just hours earlier, Stephen had professed that he was a virgin and was saving himself for marriage. When asked why he had condoms, he told them he had stolen them from other apartments in the complex. In admitting that he had entered other apartments, he gave detectives exactly what they needed—probable cause to arrest him for burglary. Police brought Stephen McDaniel back to the police station for further interrogation while investigators continued searching his apartment.
On the ride back to the police station, Stephen’s demeanor changed completely as he sat in the back of the squad car. He appeared as if he had some sort of mental breakdown. The entire ride, he sat quietly with a blank stare on his face and looked directly forward.
Once in the interrogation room, Stephen McDaniel spoke in a calm, robotic tone. “No.” “I don’t know.” “I don’t understand.” Over and over, his answers were all the same. The young man who rambled to reporters for ten minutes just hours earlier now couldn’t utter more than three words at a time.
His wide, unblinking eyes made him look as if he were in a permanently surprised state. They fixed directly into Detective Patterson’s eyes, but seemed to look through him rather than at him. It almost appeared as if he were in some sort of trance. His responses to the barrage of questions were so monotone that at one point, Detective Patterson asked him if he had ever taken acid. His reply, of course, was a simple, “No.”
It was well after midnight on the last day of June 2011. Perhaps Stephen was just tired. After all, he had a long day. Several days, actually. It was a lot of work dismembering a human body.
Detective: “Why are you acting like this?”
Stephen: “I don’t understand.”
Detective: “Earlier today we sat here and talked, but now you’re acting like you don’t know what’s going on. Did something happen to you? Why are you shutting down? Why are you not talking to me?”
Stephen: “I don’t know.”
Detective: “Are you scared?”
Stephen: “No.”
Each answer was slow and deliberate, with his eyes never leaving the eyes of the detective. He remained distant and disengaged the entire time.
Two detectives took turns aggressively questioning him with little success. At one point, one detective used what’s called the “futility technique.” It was a technique where the interrogator plays on the doubts that are already present in the suspect’s mind in an attempt to persuade them to admit guilt.
Detective: “There’s blood in your apartment, Stephen. You didn’t get it up! Don’t you watch CSI? Yeah, we know it. Stephen, why is there blood in your bathroom?”
The technique, however, had no effect on him because the detective was lying and Stephen knew it. He knew they wouldn’t find blood in his apartment because he butchered her in her own apartment, not his.
When asked why he had so many guns, including a semi-automatic rifle, Stephen claimed he just liked them and had never fired them. Not once.
After two hours of an extremely strange interrogation (available in the online appendix at the end of this book), detectives let him speak to his mother, who had traveled to Macon to see him. When his mother entered the interrogation room, his demeanor changed back to the normal Stephen. His dazed answers were all for show – a pathetic strategy he had hoped would make him look insane.
The interrogation was useless, but investigators had gathered more than enough evidence at the scene to arrest Stephen McDaniel for murder.
In his apartment, police found a flash drive with hundreds of personal photos of Lauren Giddings. Some photos had been taken inside her apartment. They found a video camera with video taken from outside of Lauren’s second-story window. He had attached the video camera to the end of a six-foot wooden pole. Stephen stood on the ground beneath her bedroom window and raised the camera up to record inside her bedroom. He recorded one video in the evening just before she was murdered.
Stephen had in his possession a master key to every apartment in the complex that he had stolen from a security guard who had previously worked there. One of the most crucial pieces of evidence was a hacksaw that was found in a storage cabinet of the laundry room. There was still blood on the blade that contained Lauren Gidding’s DNA. They found the packaging for the same blade in his apartment.
Searches of his computer’s browser history showed Google searches for the terms “escape prison” and “choked unconscious how long wake up.” The searches were entered just minutes before Lauren was murdered. Stephen’s Facebook and LinkedIn histories had shown several visits to Lauren’s online profiles. He had also visited websites and watched videos of sex with dead bodies and violent pornography.
* * *
With his bond set at $2.5 million, Stephen McDaniel sat in jail for the next three years while prosecutors built their case against him. The evidence continued to mount against him and he faced the death penalty. A death penalty trial could have taken five to seven years to prepare for, but in April 2014, Stephen saved the state those years and confessed to killing Lauren Giddings.
In a written statement Stephen admitted that on the night of June 26, 2011, around 4:30 A.M., he entered her apartment with the master key. Wearing gloves and a mask, he crept into her bedroom and stood in the doorway, watching her sleep. But when he took another step, the floorboard creaked and Lauren woke up. She yelled, “Get the fuck out!”
Stephen leapt onto her bed and wrapped his gloved hands around her throat. They fought and tumbled out of the bed and onto the floor. During the altercation, Lauren scratched his face and stomach. When she grabbed at his face, she pulled his mask off and realized it was Stephen. She cried, “Stephen? Please stop.”
On the floor at the side of the bed, Lauren got her legs caught underneath the bed, which kept her from kicking him. Stephen sat on top of her and strangled her for fifteen minutes before she stopped moving.
Once she was dead, Stephen dragged her body into her bathroom, put her in the bathtub, and went back to his own apartment. He stayed in his apartment on his computer for almost twenty hours.
Just before midnight on Sunday night, Stephen returned to Lauren’s apartment with a hacksaw. He removed her arms, legs, and head, placing them in black plastic garbage bags. He walked across the street to the Mercer Law School and placed the extremities in a dumpster. His mask, gloves, and the shirt he was wearing were cut into small pieces which he flushed down the toilet.
After dumping the body parts, Stephen returned to Lauren’s apartment to clean up. He had contained the mess to the bathroom only.
Stephen explained to detectives that he did not sexually assault her. He told that he didn’t even take off her clothes and her torso still had on the same pink running shorts he had killed her in.
He went on to explain that he continued to prepare for the bar exam on Monday and attended a Bar prep class on Tuesday and Wednesday.
Stephen claimed that while he searched with Lauren’s friends on Thursday, he was in a, “dream-like delusional state.”
“I believed, at the time, while taking part in the search, that Lauren was still alive and that I had not done what I had done, even searching the empty law school in a delusional hope of finding Lauren alive and well, as if I had not really killed her.”
Stephen McDaniel expressed his sorrow and regret in the signed confession, but his shallow words did nothing to alleviate the grief experienced by Lauren’s family.
Stephen chalked his actions up to momentary confusion and panic. He claimed he never intended on killing her, but his calculated actions showed premeditation. He had purchased the hacksaw blade days before he actually killed Lauren.
The fact was, Stephen McDaniel was a stalker and a voyeur. Plain and simple. The object of his obsession had graduated and was moving away within days, meaning she would no longer be in his life. It was his last chance. Stephen McDaniel couldn’t bear the thought of never seeing Lauren Giddings again. Once she left school, he would just be someone she used to know. By murdering her, his actions connected them forever.
Stephen McDaniel was sentenced to life without the possibility of parole until 2041. The head, arms, and legs of Lauren Giddings were never recovered.
